Something out of childhood whistles through space, a sense of games and half-made
selves, but it's not that you're pretending to be someone else. You're pretending to
be exactly who you are. That's the curious thing. - Don DeLillo Underworld
(extract from Viable Lifeforms - John Gillett, 1999)

17 September - 31 October 1999

Through mythology, story telling and games we
have always invented strange creatures - we like to play god and give our alien creatures
a sense of eternity to transcend the ephemeral and uncertain.

Simon Granger's paintings of animals seduce
us into believing that they could be soft, funny toys, but their distant stare and their
imposing presence remind us that they cannot be touched or even disturbed.

They confidently hover in their own safe world captured in a
moment of complete existence